From the Doctor's Office to a New Front Door

April 9, 2024 — The Day Everything Changed

I know exactly where I was sitting. I know exactly how the air felt in that room. I know the weight of those four words — small cell lung cancer — and how they landed between David and me like something physical, something you could almost see.

The statistics were not in our favor. The road ahead was uncertain. And I will be honest with you — in that moment, I didn't fully know what God was about to do. But I know now. And I will spend the rest of my life telling it.

Because David is still here. Two years, two months, and twenty-four days later — still here. Still standing. Still testifying.

And today — June 2, 2026 — we closed on a home.

The Valley Was Real

I want you to know this testimony from the inside. Not the sanitized version. Not the highlight reel. The real one.

The chemotherapy was brutal. Every single treatment sent David to the hospital for days or weeks at a time. I watched him lose his hair, lose his strength, and endure things that no person should have to endure. The toll on his body was immense. And yet, through every single treatment, he never complained. Not once. He kept his eyes fixed on something — Someone — beyond the suffering.

He embodied what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18: "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen."

The cancer had metastasized to David's hip before we even knew he had cancer — in fact, that's how we discovered the diagnosis in the first place. Eventually, that hip broke all the way through. And yet, David kept walking. He kept making runs to the store. He kept living his life as if nothing was wrong, while carrying pain that would have stopped most people in their tracks. Doctors later told us he shouldn't have been able to walk for a month or more. But somehow, he had been doing exactly that.

That's not David's toughness. That's God.

The Moment That Undid Me

There is one moment I will never forget. Early one morning, I woke to find David sitting on his walker — the kind with a seat — completely unclothed, in our open doorway, exposed to anyone who might walk by.

Now — you have to understand something about my David. He is modest to the core. This was so out of character that I knew immediately something was terribly wrong. That day ended in the emergency room, where we discovered his ammonia levels had spiked, causing confusion and unusual behavior. It was frightening. It was, for a man who deeply values his dignity, the kind of moment you'd want to bury and never speak of again.

But that is not what David did.

Once he recovered, I watched in amazement as he wove that humiliating moment into his testimony. He told the story — walker, nakedness, confusion, open doorway, and all — and used it to point people to God's faithfulness in our most vulnerable moments. He made jokes. He laughed at himself. And through it all, he glorified God.

He lived out 2 Corinthians 12:9 in a way I had never seen before: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Nothing is wasted in the Kingdom. Nothing is too broken to be redeemed.

The Nursing Home Became a Mission Field

After his hip replacement surgery, David spent time in a nursing home recovering. Most people would have turned inward during that season — focused only on their own healing, their own survival. And no one would have blamed him. Not David.

He spent his recovery telling everyone — staff, other patients, visitors — how awesome his God is. He didn't see it as time lost or an interruption to his life. He saw it as an assignment. God had placed him there for a purpose, and David was going to make the most of every conversation, every interaction. He turned suffering into witness and pain into praise.

For David, that nursing home was his Jerusalem — and every person there heard about the goodness of God.

What God Taught Me in the Valley

I wrote a longer piece about this journey as a gift to David at Christmas 2025. In it, I tried to capture everything I learned sitting in the front row of his faith. Let me share some of it with you now.

I've learned that true faith isn't dependent on outcomes. It doesn't rise and fall with circumstances. It remains steady because it's anchored in God's character, not our comfort. Romans 8:28 became more than a verse to me — it became a lived reality: "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

I've learned that surrender isn't weakness — it's the highest form of strength. It takes no courage to demand that God bend to our will. It takes everything to say, "Not my will, but Yours," and mean it. David showed me what that looks like in the real world, in the hard moments, in the cancer ward and the nursing home and the emergency room at two in the morning.

I've learned that our witness is most powerful not when everything is going well, but when we glorify God in the valley. Anyone can praise God on the mountaintop. But to worship Him in the cancer ward — to laugh at yourself in the nursing home — to turn your most embarrassing moments into testimonies of His faithfulness — that's the kind of faith that moves people. That's the witness that changes lives.

David never set out to teach me any of this. He was just trying to honor God with whatever he was given — whether that was one more day or one more decade. But in doing so, he gave me a gift I will carry for the rest of my life.

June 2, 2026 — We Closed on a Home

Two years, two months, and twenty-four days after that doctor's office. After the chemotherapy. After the broken hip. After the nursing home. After the walker in the doorway and the ammonia scare and the days I didn't know what tomorrow would look like —

We closed on a home.

A new front door. A new chapter. A living, breathing testament that God is not finished with David. He is in remission, and he will tell you himself — every single breath of that remission is a gift with a purpose, and he does not plan to waste one second of it.

Citronelle, you have held us through this season in ways you may not even know. Before we turn this page, I needed you to see the full picture of the gift you gave us with your support. I needed you to know what God did. Not the easy version — the real one. The hard, beautiful, holy version.

Small cell lung cancer tried to take my David. Instead, it became the platform for one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever witnessed. God was glorified in every single moment — the terrifying diagnosis, the brutal treatments, the embarrassing setbacks, the difficult recoveries, and yes — the miraculous remission.

And on June 2nd, a new home.

"To our God be the glory, to our God be praise. I will boast ever only in the Lord, my God.”

_"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." —_ Job 13:15 (NKJV)

To God be all the glory — forever and ever. Amen.

— Arizona Lowe